


shaking like I shook before

by Anonymous



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Good Brother Klaus Hargreeves, Good Sister Vanya Hargreeves, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Luther Is Trying, No Incest, Number Five | The Boy Has Issues, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, Panic Attacks, Paranoia, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sibling Love, They stopped the apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-12-26 23:01:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18291980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Five tries to deal with it alone, until he learns that he doesn’t have to.





	shaking like I shook before

**Author's Note:**

> This story contains fairly non-graphic references and discussion of sexual assault, and a survivor learning to cope in the aftermath. It’s also Five, who is physically underage, despite mentally being much older.
> 
> I just want to make it clear that I am NOT in any way glorifying or fetishizing this subject matter, and that this fic is about recovery and familial love, above all.
> 
> (Title's from Say Anything by Marianas Trench, a song that's an ancient love of mine)

Five’s been through some shit.

Everyone can see it written all over his face, hear it in the little tremble woven through his words that he can’t always chalk up to being worryingly over-caffeinated. He’s aware everyone can see it, but he also can’t bring himself to admit a single part of it to them.

At any given point during any given day, it’s just like he’s back at the end of the world. The clean and fresh air around him is suddenly choked with ash, his family isn’t there, they’re gone, they’re dead and it’s all his fault for not being smart or fast enough. Luther gives him a long stare. He worries.

“You’re not okay, Five,” he says one day, when they’re trying to eat some diner lunch together in that summer after the halted apocalypse.

Five has just come out of a flashback. A bad one that had made him numb to the world. It takes him a while to get enough air back in his lungs to speak. “I-  
I don’t want or need any pity. Keep it to yourself.”

“No. Come on, you’re— you’re not doing okay. You survived some hellscape for so many years, all alone. No one comes out of that without a scratch.”

Five feels something like indignant anger (with a heaping spoonful of guilt) flare up in him, and he smacks his hand down on the shiny table.

“You know I’m right,” Luther says, sipping at whatever type of juice he’d ordered from the place. “But it’s okay to take your time through all this. It’s- you know it’s new to me too. This whole...” he makes a little gesture, too small for his stature. “... _feelings_ thing.”

Five’s deep frown softens, just a touch.

“Just... please open up to one of us eventually though. You can’t keep pushing it all down.”

 _Fucking watch me,_ Five instinctively wants to snap back. But he doesn’t. Because that’s now how he really feels at all. He goes quiet, and stays quiet while they finish eating.

When they walk out to the car, Five breaks, right there in the middle of the parking lot. It starts off as a choked up feeling in his throat, a few tears he can easily brush away, but then, when his brother looks at him, opening his mouth to say whatever stupid nice things he’s going to say, Five feels himself start sobbing.

“Shit- ’m sorry,” he manages to gasp.

Luther pulls him aside, gently sitting him down on some random curb. “Shh. Hey, it’s okay.”

It feels like forever before Five wears himself out from crying, and blurts out some rough explanation of the doomsday flashbacks and their insistent clawing at his head. “I know it’s stupid. I know it’s illogical. We’ve stopped it, we already saved the timeline. I just want to move on! But I don’t even know where to start.”

“None of us do. It hasn’t been easy for a single one of us.” He shakes his head. “And, I’m not trying to minimize your problems. I’m not trying to say that I understand, because I don’t? Not really. But I understand that we’re all trying to work out all our issues right now, and you’re really not alone. Not anymore.”

Some kind of emotion (love?) stabs into Five’s heart, in the most pleasant sort of ache. He sniffles a few last times, for good measure. “Thanks, Luther.”

They get up, and Luther’s big arms go around Five in a hug, decidedly hesitant and careful after that awful mistake with Vanya, but it catches Five off guard, makes him instinctively use his powers to jump seven feet away. “That's enough of that. I’ve had enough sappiness for one day,” Five says, trying to brush aside the way he’s full-body shuddering from being touched without a warning.

Luther notices, but he doesn’t push any more than he already had earlier. Maybe he thinks it’s just paranoia from Five’s previous dangerous line of work (Five _wishes_ that’s all it was), or maybe it’s something he’ll ask their other siblings to keep a lookout for, at a family meeting Five is not invited to.

He feels like he can never tell them the other thing that makes him so, so, so immeasurably afraid. He can never tell anyone, he even hates admitting it to himself. He feels like he can never trust anyone, ever again. Not Luther, not Klaus, not Allison, not Diego, not even Vanya. When one of them (Klaus) makes a dumb sex joke, or does something as simple as clasping a hand on his shoulder (Diego), Five tenses up, grimaces.

Every time someone gets too close to him on the street, Five keeps in mind twenty different ways to murder them, just in case. When he’d gone shopping for some nice new clothes that looked more respectable than his Academy uniform and didn’t bring back awful memories, the man that worked there had been far too friendly, had leaned in too close for Five’s comfort, asked him too many personal questions, and Five had left in a hurry, without even buying anything there. ~~And after breaking the man’s kneecaps in quick, efficient kicks.~~

The thing is, The Handler, she–

No. Not thinking about that. The past is in the past, and Five is fine. Really.

He’s been thinking about going to school in the fall. Actual school. As in, not their asshole father’s messed-up idea of a school. He’s sure he could move ahead to an Ivy League college with the brains he’s got, and mentally, he’s long past college-age. Maybe he could even get lower tuition, on account of technically being a senior citizen. But then, who knows if anyone in the American school system will accept any part of what he says. The other option is Normal Eighth Grade. Whatever minuscule still-pursuing-tiny-crumbs-of-happiness part of Five that exists despite _literally everything_ is kind of intrigued (?) by this option. Growing up again, but this time, doing it right. Playing pranks on the worst teachers with his powers, making friends (???), fitting in (in a way).

But he doesn’t belong there. He shouldn’t want to go there. It’s beneath him, isn’t it? He's not a child. Plus his siblings would all have a field day with this golden new opportunity to make fun of him. Except for Vanya, Vanya would probably just be happy that he’s happy.

He’s been living with Vanya, in that little apartment, now with locks on its windows, because rapists can climb. Fuck, but his could do more than just climb.

His–

The Handler, she’d kept him in her office, alone, so she could–

He wants to throw up. His stomach lurches like he might, and sometimes, when it’s too quiet, he can still feel her hands under his clothes.

And the worst part is, she’s some stupid ageless being that exists beyond time itself, and she’ll never have face any consequences for what she’s done to him. To anyone. Five thinks ~~knows~~ she’s the most evil person he knows. He blew her up with that grenade in her own office but there’s no way that was enough, what if she’s still out there, what if she’ll come back for him—

If he could kill The Handler, and really get rid of her, once and for all, he would. And he would enjoy every second of it.

God, if he killed her, maybe he could relax.

He’s sitting on Vanya’s couch one night, and they’re both reading separate books (he’s on book six of the series she’s only just started, and he refuses to give her any clues as to what happens later on outside of smug smirks when she asks a question). When the nerves start setting in, Five clears his throat and asks her about who she saw, therapist-wise.

“I think I have PTSD,” he explains, forcing his voice to stay level. Vanya most definitely could already tell. He can’t watch any end-times, mass-destruction movies without inciting vivid nightmares that make him wake up screaming. But he’d also puked two days ago when Allison’s new perfume had smelled too much like the one The Handler wore. He hadn’t told anyone about that.

“Okay,” Vanya says. “I can call Eleanor in the morning. If you don’t want it to be her for whatever reason, she’s with a whole team. One of them will probably be a good fit.”

“Alright. Thank you.”

Vanya nods, and looks back down to her book while Five does the same. Then she thinks better of it. “I really goofed therapy when I went. Didn’t tell her everything I was feeling, I was too ashamed of a lot of it. And I didn’t have the support of… well–”

“Sorry,” Five says. Fuck the apocalypse. Fuck time travel. Fuck Reginald Hargreeves. “You have it now. You have me. And everyone else. We’re all here for you– even Ben, because you have Klaus.”

Vanya exhales a laugh through her nose. “Yeah, huh? Maybe I’ll go back when you start going.”

“You should. We probably all should.”

“Hey Five?” Vanya calls out from her bed later, just before they’re about to try and get some sleep. “You’re really brave, you know. For admitting you need help.”

Five turns to face her general direction in the dark. She’d gotten him a bed of his own to put in the same room as her, so the both of them would feel safer, but he’s thinking it’s more for his benefit than hers. “I don’t feel brave. Not anymore.”

“Well. You are. And don’t think I forget that you were always brave. You were one of the first ones to mouth off to dad, and you never stopped doing it no matter how bad he got.” Her sheets rustle as she struggles to get comfortable.

Five sighs. “I think if I had Klaus’ power, I’d try to reanimate dad just so I could kill him again. Especially after knowing how he was to you.”

“Can Klaus even do that? Reanimate people?”

“Who knows?”

It takes Five a long time to fall asleep that night.

He ends up going with Alex, not Eleanor. Alex is really kind, and they don’t prod at Five to open up about things he isn’t ready to talk about. He mostly talks about the apocalypse at first, and Delores, and his family’s entire sordid history. Alex helps him sort out a lot of the anger and alcohol dependence he’s developed, and it’s not great all the time, but it is less awful.

Then one day, about a month into their meetings, he brings The Handler up. He doesn’t overthink it, doesn’t plan it, but it slips out of his mouth that she had sexually assaulted him. The words seem to crystalize as they leave his mouth, feeling unreal. Will Alex think he’s making it up? Maybe it wasn’t that bad. It hadn’t hurt, had it? He didn’t even remember if it had hurt or not, couldn’t process what exactly she’d done, he'd had to keep moving immediately after so that he could have any chance of saving the world.

All he could remember was her hands on him, and his inability to push her away or tell her to stop.

Alex instructs him to breathe, in for seven, hold for four, exhale for eight to calm the fight or flight in him. To focus on breathing through the flashbacks, to try grounding himself by focusing on textures around him, or sounds he can hear.

They tell him all this, but properly acknowledging what had happened makes Five think of it more at first. Makes the flashbacks worse, because now it’s this real thing that happened to him that he can’t deny or disassociate from. It happened to this body, not his old and weathered apocalypse survivor body.

It’s jarring to start coming to terms with it, and it’s not something he can hide when he’s with his siblings.

It feels like more vivid memories come back to him every day.

The Handler had smiled at him after, and he’d forced himself to move his lips as if he were smiling, as if they shared a fun secret between friends. As if she hadn’t made him feel like his insides were about to shred themselves up like the stacks of paperwork in his cushy corporate workspace that he hated.

He digs his fingernails into the palms of his hand, tries tries _tries_ Alex's grounding techniques but they take too long.

Maybe he could have stopped it before it happened, if he’d told her to stop with all her casual-not casual touches to his cheek, his shoulder, his jaw. (Why couldn’t she stop touching him?)

Maybe he had done something to lead her on without realizing it.

They’re having something of a sleepover at the academy one night, and Five’s in his old room again.

Grace makes him nervous sometimes. For absolutely no reason other than that she dresses like (a pastel version of) The Handler, just a little, just enough to make him swallow shakily when he catches sight of her silhouette in a hallway. The click-clacks her heels make on the floor is exactly the same. And Grace would never do anything close to what The Handler did, she’s a robot, and his mother (for all intents and purposes). Unless she would. Unless something in her programming went bad and she would––

 _Ow, okay._ His fingernails are close to actually piercing his skin now, and he should stop doing this, but it works faster than what Alex told him to do.

The click-clacking heels outside his door coincide with thinking, and remembering too damn much. “Stop. Please stop,” Five says, scrambling to pull his bedsheets over him. Every nerve inside his body is on edge. It's suddenly too hot, it's unrelentingly suffocating in there, and Five doesn't think he'll ever come down from this panic. It may well kill him. But then he starts to process that the figure before him is just Klaus, and nothing to be afraid of. “I’m not there anymore,” he mutters to himself. “Not there, I’m not there, I’m here. I’m safe.”

Klaus raises his hands up in a show of innocence intent, backs up a few paces. “Didn’t mean to… spook you, Fives. Sorry. I– can I come in?”

Five nods.

“I've noticed you’ve been dealing with something like what I have, after Vietnam. And I know you’re in therapy now. But you look like you’re having a rough day, and if you wanna talk, you can tell me anything. That apocalypse sure sounded like it sucked balls.”

Five wants to cover his face with his hands when he hears himself start to admit “It’s not just about the apocalypse. There’s something else.”

“Oh.” Klaus points to the floor beneath him. “Can I–?”

Five nods again, and Klaus sits his lanky self down crisscross applesauce. “I’m all ears and we’ve got nothing but time, baby bro.”

Now’s as good a time as any. Anxiety rattles at Five’s chest, pinpricks of fear creeping up and down his back. “When I.. worked for the Commission, I had a boss. She was called The Handler.” In for seven, hold for four, out for eight. His heart pounds like hell. “She liked me, too much.”

He doesn’t know if Klaus knows what he’s getting at, but he doesn’t know how to continue. He tries anyways. Alex says that the more he talks about what feels unspeakable, the less power it will have over him, so it's time to put that to the test.

“She was always touching me, and I couldn’t tell her to stop. I was scared of her. And she didn’t stop, Klaus.” He’s shaking with shame.

Klaus is quiet, processing.

“She’s extremely powerful. She can manipulate time. I don't know if she's alive or dead or what. She made me feel powerless, like I’m _the age that I look like._ It's disgusting, I feel disgusting––" Five’s mouth tastes like metal and he’s going to start crying any second. “I need a drink. Or ten. I want to stop thinking.” He shifts to get up and make himself something.

“No, no, no, no… you’re not getting any drinks,” Klaus insists. “Don’t want you to end up like me.” He looks off into the space where Ben probably is. “Ben says he loves you. And I do too. We don’t ever say that to each other in this family, do we? That’s fucked up. We should say it more.” His voice sounds well and truly locked up with emotion. “I love you. You’re not disgusting, Five, not at all. And I’m here for you.”

Five feels like he’s in the depths of it now, the fear and anger and disgust– the place he’s been avoiding for so long, because of how overwhelming its darkness is. He’s crying, like with that time with Luther, but this feels even more endless.

Klaus stands, hovering awkwardly nearby, but not too near. “Can I hug you?”

“Yeah, you… thank you? For asking,” Five babbles through all the salty tears dripping into his mouth, feeling so acutely unlike himself. Klaus’s arms around him actually don’t feel bad. They’re not causing him any panic. They’re doing the opposite, soothing, bringing warmth to the unbearable internal cold. His brother murmurs all this bullshit about how he’s going to be okay, and maybe it isn’t bullshit.

Five mumbles it into Klaus’ chest.

“Did you say something, mon frere?”

“–– Said _I love you too._ ” It feels good to say it, like it feels... strangely good? To have cried? To have spoken up, where previously he could only be silent. It's a long, long road to getting "better," whatever that even entails, but at least he's starting to walk it.

**Author's Note:**

> So I uh. May have just created a separate ao3 account just to be emo about umbrella academy and process some of my own traumas and feelings through these characters that I love so much all of a sudden.
> 
> I plan to make this the first in a little series about all the Hargreeves sibs dealing with some kind of issue(s) and taking steps toward getting better with the help of their fam, so if y'all have any suggestions/recs for future installments, blease gimme a comment!! (I have some ideas for Allison and Klaus but,,, no one else)
> 
> And if any of you are going through what Five goes through in this fic, please talk to someone about it, whether it's a text helpline (https://hotline.safehelpline.org/tos/0) is really really good, a friend/family member, or best of all, a therapist you trust– it makes all the difference in the world.
> 
> (Also? Therapy is amazing and life-changing and definitely important, BUT it doesn't instantly flip a switch and make you fine all of a sudden. I guess that's what I'm going for at the end here. Therapy *is* helping Five, but he's still way at the beginning of it, and bad days are always going to happen.)


End file.
